FINAL EXAM 2.1/5

De Kooning: Woman I

Abstract Expressionism Although rooted in figuration, including pictures of female models on advertising billboards, de Kooning's Woman I displays the energetic application of pigment typical of gestural abstraction.

Pollock: Lavendar Mist

Abstract Expressionism Pollock's paintings are pure abstractions that emphasize the creation process. His mural-sized canvases consist of rhythmic drips, splatters, and dribbles of paint that draw viewers into a lacy spider web.

Rothko: No. 14

Color Field His two color scheme is simple but conveys a feeling, especially with the blurred edges that make the forms lift from the canvas. This work is all about the viewer's experience - one Rothko believed can be the same as the one he experienced when he painted it. No. 14" like most of his works, was meant to incite a human response, one any person could feel. The colors were a backdrop of sorts; the painting is nearly ten feet tall. Standing in front of it, you lose your sense of self as you are in the realm of the color. It envelops your vision and gives you a stage to experience emotion.

Duchamp: Fountain

Dada Duchamp's ready-made sculptures were mass produced objects that the Dada artist modified. He forced people to see a urinal in a new light- as an art piece.

Mondrian: Composition in Yellow, Red, and Blue

De Stijl Mondrian altered the grid patterns and the size and the placement to create an internal cohesion and harmony. He worked to maintain what he called "dynamic equilibrium" in his paintings by precisely determining the size and position of the lines, shapes, and colors. The purpose of the De Stijl movement was a total integration of art and life.

Chicago: The Dinner Party

Gender and Sexuality Chicago's Dinner Party honors 39 women from antiquity to 20th cen. America. The triangular form and materials- painted china and fabric- are traditionally associated with women.

Sikander: Perilous Order

Gender and Sexuality Imbuing miniature painting with a contemporary message about hypocrisy and inter tolerance, Sikander portrayed a gay friend as a homosexual Mughal emperor who enforced Muslim orthodoxy.

Aaron Douglas: Aspects of Negro Life: From Slavery Through Reconstruction

Harlem Renaissance Douglas derived his personal style from Synthetic Cubism and used that style to represent symbolically the historical and cultural memories of African Americans.

Neshat: Allegiance and Wakefulness

Identity Neshat's photographs address the repression of women in post-revolutionary Iran. She poses in traditional veiled garb but wields a rifle and displays militant Farsi poetry on her exposed body parts.

Serverini: Armored Train

Italian Futurism The glistening armored train with protruding cannon reflects the Futurist faith in the cleansing action of war. The painting captures the dynamism and motion central to the Futurist manifesto. Submerged in the bowls of the train, soldiers point guns at an unseen target.

Boccioni: Unique Forms of Continuity in Space

Italian Futurism This sculpture advocated the abolishing of enclosed sculptures. The figure is so expanded, interrupted, and broken in a plane and contour that it almost disappears behind the blur of movement.

Kiefer: Nigredo

Neo-Expressionism Kiefer's paintings have thickly encrusted surfaces incorporating materials such as straw. Here the German artist used perspective to pull the viewer into a incinerated landscape alluding to the Holocaust.

Viola: The Crossing

New Media Viola's video projects use contrasts in scale, shift in focus, mirrored reflections, extreme slow motion, and staccato editing to create dramatic sensory experience rooted in tangible reality.

Delauney: Homage to Bleriot

Orphism This canvas celebrated modern technology innovations. Delaunay paid tribute to the first pilot to fly across the English Channel. The swirling shapes and bold colors convey explosive energy.

Beuys: How to Explain Pictures to a Dead Hare

Performance Art In this one person event, Beuys coated his head with honey and golf leaf and spoke to a dead hare. Assuming the role of a shaman, he used stylized actions to evoke a sense of mystery and sacred ritual.

Warhol: Marilyn Diptych

Pop Art Marilyn Monroe died in August 1962. In the following four months, Warhol made more than twenty silkscreen paintings of her, all based on the same publicity photograph from the 1953 film Niagara. Warhol found in Monroe a fusion of two of his consistent themes: death and the cult of celebrity. By repeating the image, he evokes her ubiquitous presence in the media. The contrast of vivid colour with black and white, and the effect of fading in the right panel are suggestive of the star's mortality.

Smithson: Spiral Jetty

Site Specific Work Smithson used industrial equipment to create Environmental artworks by manipulating earth and rock. Spiral Jetty is a mammoth coil of black basalt, limestone, and earth extended into Great Salt Lake.

Wodiczko: The Homeless Projection

Social and Political Commentary To publicize the plight of the homeless, Wodiczko projected on the walls of a monument on Boston Common images of them with their plastic bags containing their few possessions.

Malevich: Airplane Flying

Suprematism Malevich believed that supreme reality is "pure feeling" that attaches no object. Because of this, he created a new style of art that claimed supremacy over the forms of nature, called "Suprematism." His pieces featured no objective subject and only worked with shapes on white. The red, yellow, blue, and green shapes are bunched together in no particular order to create this strange subject. Although the subject is nothing seen in nature, the colors and varying shapes create this story and relationship by how they are placed. This is what Suprematism is. The colors and shapes evoke feeling and anyone can easily understand his work because the symbols are universal.

Magritte: The Treachery of Images

Surrealism Magritte's The Treachery of Images soberly prompts the viewer to question their perception of reality. The piece depicts a single large pipe with a playfully-scripted caption reading "this is not a pipe". His point is simple: the painting is not a pipe; it is an image of a pipe. Upon first glance, the proper use of lighting and shading displays an accurate rendering of an actual pipe, but the text below would disagree. Written as if it held an educational function and value, the statement denies the legitimacy of the pipe. Magritte wanted the viewer to question the reality of the piece, to believe the image or the text, a perpetual struggle between the presentation and the rejection of the presentation. The tension that is produced as a result from the struggle, spurs the viewer to ponder the denial of authorities of language and representation.

Miro: Painting

Surrealism Miro promoted the automatism, the creation of art without conscious control. He began the painting with random doodles and completed the composition with forms suggesting floating amoebic organisms.

Stieglitz: Steerage

American Modernism Photo taken from an ocean liner is a haunting mixture of human activity and found patterns and forms. Stieglitz wanted photography to seen as fine art.

Hartley: Portrait of a German Officer

American Modernism This is a elegy to a lover killed in battle, Hartley arranged military related images against a somber black background.

Kosuth: One of Three Chairs

Conceptual Art Conceptual artists regard the concept as an artwork's defining component. To portray "chairness" Kosuth juxtaposed a chair, a photograph of a chair, and dictionary definition of "chair"

Kruger: Your Gaze Hits the Side of My Face

Gender and Sexuality This explores the "male gaze". Using the technique of mass media, she constructed this world-and-photograph collage to challenge culturally constructed notions of gender.

Wiley: Napoleon leading the Army Over the Alps

Identity This piece is specific to Wiley, in that it is a re-working of a famous portrait, originally by Jacques-Louis David. The work depicts the narrative in a colorful backdrop and features a new subject, indicative of the Modernist trend.

Balla: Dynamism of a Dog on a Leash

Italian Futurism Shows an interest in motion. The affect of motion is achieved by repeating shapes- for example the dog's legs and tail.

Hamilton: Just What Is It That Makes Today's Homes So Different, So Appealing?

Pop Art The fantasy interior in Hamilton's collage of figures and objects cut from glossy magazines reflects the values of modern consumer culture. Toying with mass-media imagery typifies British Pop Art.

Leger: The City

Purism Purism hones its focus to the clean geometry of the machine. At this time, industrialization was booming because of machine technology, so Purists wanted to advance with the age and show the machine-aesthetic with simple, pure forms. The city captures the mechanical commotion of urban life, incorporating bits of billboard ads, flashing lights, and noisy traffic.